The protests continue, the violent and brutal crackdowns on dissent continue, the Iranian government continues to try and muffle the media and electronic forms of communication, and Iran’s “senior ayatollah” has condemned the election results as a sham. Read all that and more at Memeorandum, where the links on the good, bad, and ugly continue to pile up.

Opposition demonstrators carry a large green flag through the crowd during a demonstration in support of defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi earlier this week. Iran's opposition is holding another rally and stepping up its challenge to the Islamic regime as the authorities intensify a crackdown on the media to try to contain the biggest crisis since the 1979 revolution. (AFP/File/Behrouz Mehri)

The plot thickens and their rationale for the firing, quite frankly, stinks. If it really was all about Walpin being “confused and disoriented” at a recent meeting, then Obama should have had no issue whatsoever making Congress aware of their concerns -as they were required to do by law, as Democrat Senator and Obama support Claire McCaskill reminded the admin yesterday:

“The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service,” McCaskill said. “The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal.”

McCaskill, a key Obama ally, said that the president’s stated reason for the termination, “Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason.”

Let’s unwind the timeline a bit to test this new allegation. Walpin pressed hard to prosecute Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson for defrauding the government over more than $400,000 in community service grants. Johnson, an Obama supporter, got a deal from the White House that allowed him to manage federal funds again and avoid paying back at least half of the grant money he used illegally. The White House cut Walpin out of those negotiations, and Walpin went to Congress about it.

At that point, the White House called Walpin and told him he had an hour to resign or be fired. Now, if the White House thought that Walpin was somehow incapacitated or disoriented, why bother to make that call at all? In fact, wouldn’t an employer with an ounce of empathy send the employee to a physician for diagnosis first? Even without the empathy, the proper course would have been to address the issue with Congress first instead of making an intimidation attempt to someone the White House now paints as all but senile.